


After the Storm

by celli-inkblots (thebeespatella)



Series: Unfinished Tales, or, How I Fangirled Over Carpe Brewski [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Carpe Brewski, Explicit Language, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sexual Content, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-24
Updated: 2011-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:40:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebeespatella/pseuds/celli-inkblots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A companion piece to <a> White Blank Page</a>. Set at an indeterminate time within the Carpe Brewski verse – en route to the Xavier Mansion, inclement weather forces Erik and Charles to stop at a bed and breakfast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Bros, this started out cracky and fun, I swear. Sorry? This is dedicated to my AIM and tinychat bros, particularly Katypants (Dundee) who is studying very, very hard for an exam and is going to do great.

Neither of them is particularly surprised when it starts raining hard enough to drown a horse.

“Fucking typical,” Erik mutters as Charles squints through the windshield.

“Mm,” Charles agrees. “Now all we need is – ”

An enormous bolt of lightning rent the fog before them, followed by a rumble of thunder that makes Charles’ travel mug shudder.

“Asshole,” Erik shouts, more out of surprise than anything else. “You broke the sky!”

“Fuck you,” Charles says distractedly, pulling out his phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking up places to stay. There’s no way – ”

“It’s not that – ”

“I thought I _broke the sky_ ,” Charles retorts.

“So you’re gonna stop, and get out of the car – Jesus, just fix the sky – ”

“It is entirely too dangerous to stay on this road,” Charles says flatly. “Unless you have some kind of weird superpower that could clear the storm, or perhaps pull a massive satellite dish or whatever to cover us, we are finding somewhere to stay.”

Erik’s still muttering as Charles Google Maps the area, saying things like “that tone” and “stop being a bitch” and “what the fuck” and variants thereof, and Charles has to smile to himself. Erik would probably rather drown than abandon a task halfway through.

He finally settles on Betty’s Bed and Breakfast. Apparently they have a charming collection of china dolls. Charles doesn’t really care, it’s ten minutes from where they are and it’s raining harder and harder and seriously one of these raindrops is definitely going to come through the windshield and break his face. He starts up the car, and starts to drive slowly.

“Why a satellite dish?” Erik asks as Charles navigates the road.

“What?”

“Earlier, you said satellite dish. Why the fuck would I move a satellite dish, dude, that’s completely random.”

“It just seemed – logical,” Charles says. “We’re in the middle of basically nowhere, it’s…”

“Still completely random.”

“There’s a satellite dish just outside the house,” Charles sighs. “You can bitch about it all you want when we get there. As for now – ” He pulls into the driveway underneath the sign that says BETTY’S B&B in truly the ugliest font he’s ever laid eyes on. “Are we getting stuff out of the back?”

Erik rolls his eyes and reaches into the backseat. “You made me pack an extra set of everything, remember? An extra set, like I was going to pee my pants or something – ”

“Erik, you have been known to be unable to reach the potty on time,” Charles says gravely.

“Asshole. Freshman year – nothing counts. Nothing.”

“Let’s go,” Charles says as his travel mug shudders in the cup-holder again.

They struggle in the rain which blurs everything – “Congratulations, Charles, you found the one bed and breakfast without a door in all of America” – and by the time they make it in, Charles’ hair is completely soaked but more importantly, Erik’s t-shirt is clinging to him and his nipples have very clearly hardened in the cold and maybe Charles will just look away now.

“Hi,” he says breathlessly to the receptionist, who with her bleached blonde hair and obscene suit jacket frankly looks like a porn star. “Two – ”

“One,” Erik interjects firmly. “One room.”

“Erik…” Charles suddenly understands – his reticence to stop, his indignant refusals. “One,” he agrees.

She eyes them, eyebrow raised in a way that reminds him of Raven. Maybe not porn, then. “One – ?”

“Two!” both Erik and Charles shout.

“Not one _queen-sized_ – ”

“Two, please,” Charles says, and hands over his credit card, refusing to look at Erik at all. He can feel the silence radiating behind him as he signs and takes the key. “It’s just easier to pay by card, okay?” he says all in a rush when they get to the stairwell.

“Isn’t it always,” Erik mutters.

“You can pay me back.” Charles says, knowing very well that he is going to shred the receipt and flush it down the toilet.

The stairs creak under their weight, wet footprints glistening on the dark wood.

“Dude,” Erik says, and Charles stiffens, thinking perhaps that somehow, Erik knew he was going to hide the receipt, that somehow – “the receptionist kind of looked like a porn star. Like, hardcore.”

“No,” Charles replies, sighing in relief. “No, her nails were far too long for any sort of activity to be remotely comfortable.”

“That doesn’t make her, like, not a porn star,” Erik says as Charles fights with the lock. “Here, just turn – in fact, it increases the probability of her porn career. Just fucking _turn_ it, Jesus – ”

“Why are you so curious?” Charles can’t help but ask, finally shoving the door open. “Is her sex life that fascinating to you?”

“What? No!” Erik says hastily. “No, dude. No. She doesn’t even look like – ”

“Well, she certainly isn’t my type,” Charles says dryly to fill the silence. He pushes his hair out of his eyes and pulls off his rain-drenched sweater, hanging it neatly in the closet.

“I’m going to shower,” Erik says, pulling his things out of the backpack. “And dude, she looks like your sister. That’s just fucking weird.”

He figures there’s nothing else to do, so he pulls his laptop out of his bag and begins to reread his next ethics paper at the little desk.

 

\--

 

When he comes back to himself, there’s a blanket on his lap, his neck hurts with the awkward angle of sleeping upright, and Erik is lying, with a book, on his stomach on the bed closest to Charles – shirtless.

“Hey,” Erik says uncharacteristically softly, turning his head to look at Charles. “You were sleeping so I moved your laptop.”

“Thanks,” Charles says automatically, but his eyes are busy raking over the smooth line of Erik’s spine, curving and dipping like the stroke of a paintbrush, the arch of his shoulder blades, the shadows of his ribs. And he has A Moment, one of those where he allows himself to imagine –

He gets up, kissing Erik on the cheek, and poking at him to move over, and lies next to him. “What’re you reading?” he asks, checking the spine of the book anyway, and looks up, and Erik’s looking at him fondly, and Erik tips his chin up for a kiss, soft, slow, and then turning to heated passion, and then Erik rips off his clothes and fucks him so hard all of Betty’s creepy-ass china dolls break – the next morning there are finger bruises on his hips and his arms hurt from bracing himself against the headboard, but –

“Um,” he says. “I guess I’ll go shower now.”

The saddest part, he thinks bitterly to himself as he strips and turns on the water, is not even that he fantasizes about Erik fucking him – what gay man wouldn’t – it’s that he fantasizes about Erik loving him. In a non-Brotherhood-y way. Loving him, making every cliché ring true, looking at him as though he were the only person in the world, as though that wouldn’t be a massive waste of time on Erik’s part. The saddest part is that what makes him hard isn’t the way Erik is sprawled half-naked on a bed (although it helps), but that he’s reading and that he’d put Charles’ laptop away and put a fucking blanket on him, and he can almost pretend –

He comes with a hoarse, bitten-off sound, forearm pressed to the cold tiles as he presses his hand against his mouth to stifle the cry.

 

\--

 

The next morning the sun is shining obscenely brightly through the gaps in the curtains, waking both Charles and Erik as it hits the room.

“Fucking – why the fuck – bitch shit – ” Erik is muttering, pulling the covers back over his head.

“All my pain,” Charles says. “All – in one place – didn’t even drink – ”

There’s a knock on the door. “Breakfast is ready!”

Erik draws a breath, probably to shout something about coitus with a rusty implement, but Charles waves an arm at him. “Food. Food is good. No, tea. Tea is yes.”

“You and your fucking tea, all because your mom’s British and shit – ”

“Earl Grey is particularly excellent,” Charles sniffs, swinging his legs out of bed with enormous effort, and dragging his feet to the window. He knows that what he’s going to do next is going to make Erik want to kill him (but maybe that’s better than nothing) so he throws open the curtains and lets the sun bleach ever corner of the room.

Maybe he’s more than a little resentful of the way Erik is still wearing far too few clothes, torso twisted in the sheets, like an Impressionist painting – beautiful from afar, but fucked up when you got too close. Fucked up as all shit, because those blobby dots aren’t supposed to be wonderful or interesting but Charles is still enthralled, despite everything.

Morning was supposed to make him forget. Morning was supposed to be cleansing in a way that showers never could be. Time was supposed to fix things.

“Charles,” Erik begins, dangerously conversational.

“Come on,” Charles says instead of screaming. “We should get going. It’s late.”

“It’s fuck you o’clock, asswipe,” Erik grumbles, but he moves, slowly, slowly.

The gears of the day begin again, and the only thing left from the day before is a residual raindrop clinging to a shadowed corner of the windowsill, leaving Charles to wonder when the storm will truly pass. In the meantime, he thinks, as he hears the shower start _again_ , Jesus, how many baths did the man need, he will have to simply weather it as best he can.   


End file.
